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“I don’t like you, death” — Samih al-Qasim’s final poem

Mourners carried the late Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim’s casket through his hometown of al-Rama before his funeral.

Patrick Strickland

The summer sun beat down on Thursday, 21 August as thousands of Palestinians set out on a silent march in al-Rama, honoring the recently deceased poet and activist Samih al-Qasim.

The 76-year-old al-Qasim, who battled cancer for three years, died late on Tuesday, 19 August.

Placards bearing verses of al-Qasim’s poetry and Palestinian flags bobbed above the marching crowd, which eventually arrived at the town’s main amphitheater. Al-Qasim’s relatives, prominent religious figures and politicians all spoke.

Adham Toubie, 18, also from al-Rama, said that al-Qasim’s death is a “huge loss” for Palestinians everywhere. “His loyalty to Palestine, to our Arab identity, is known by everyone,” he told The Electronic Intifada.

Imprisoned

Born in 1939 in Jordan, al-Qasim was raised and lived most of his life in al-Rama, a Palestinian town in the northern Galilee region of present-day Israel.

As a young man, he was imprisoned by Israel several times during the eighteen-year period of military law imposed on Palestinian citizens of Israel following the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

After a minority of Druze religious leaders struck a deal with the Israeli government in 1956, Druze males were required to serve in Israel’s military. Born to a Druze family, al-Qasim’s conscientious objection led to his first imprisonment in the early 1960s.

Yet his tireless activism as a member of the Communist Party — the only non-Zionist political group at the time — landed him behind bars and under house arrest several more times, most notably when he and other communists were imprisoned during the 1967 War.

Refuse – Your People Will Support You, a group campaigning for conscientious objectors, sent a delegation of members to the funeral to express its appreciation of al-Qasim’s life and work.

Toubie, who is the latest person to join Refuse, explained that “[al-Qasim’s] life is evidence” that there “is no contradiction between being Palestinian and Druze.”

“Both his life and his poetry are an example for us,” added Toubie. “He made it possible for us today to refuse to serve in the occupation’s army.”

Toubie is scheduled to begin his mandatory military service in March 2015. He intends to surrender himself for imprisonment “rather than stand at a checkpoint in Ramallah or Jenin and oppress my people,” he said.

“Biggest tragedy of Palestine”

One of the funeral’s most powerful moments was when a delegation of Syrians from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights arrived. Dozens of men and women from the Druze religious community raised Palestinian and Syrian flags as they marched into the amphitheater, chanting in unison. They sang out:

Your soul is returning to Damascus, Syria.

Syria lives on in your gleaming poetry

The Arabs forgot the Golan and Palestine

Syria continues to say your land is returning

Samih, O’ symbol of culture and literature

Your leaving is the biggest tragedy of Palestine

Dozens of Syrians from the occupied Golan Heights marched into the funeral chanting a powerful stanza in remeberance of al-Qasim.

Patrick Strickland

“I don’t like you, death”

Much of al-Qasim’s poetry was markedly Palestinian, nationalist and anti-colonial. Lesser known works dealt with the subjects of love and the hardships of daily life, among others. In his final poem, he addressed death directly:

I don’t like you, death

But I’m not afraid of you

And I know that my body is your bed

And my spirit is your bed cover

I know that your banks are narrow for me

I don’t love you, death

But I’m not afraid of you.

Al-Qasim, Palestine’s “resistance poet,” left behind a lifetime’s worth of literary and political work that will continue to inspire the struggle against Israel’s ongoing regime of occupation, colonization and ethnic cleansing.

Comments

Blessings upon your memory, for you leave not only an example of peaceful resistance to tyranny, but also your immortal words to stir the soul to rise above the mundane and horrifying reality of day to day life. Blessed Be We The Free of Spirit!

Living in Canada did not take away from the Palestinian flag of Samih. First time I visited him at his newspaper office in early 1980 and the last time I saw him was at Al-Zaituna University in Jordan 2010. There he said I am Jordainan by birth, Syrian by childhood and Palestinian by growing up. I am none of any but an Arab.
May Almighty Allah place him in Al-Janna, Ameen

One of our great Palestinian treasures. Truly he left us too soon. But I am glad he lived long enough to see the beautiful rising youth for whom his poetry and his political activism formed a base. He will now live in our memory.

Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist and frequent contributor at The Electronic Intifada. He is presently working on his first book for the London-based publishing house Zed Books. See his in-depth coverage for EI.